How a neuronal fiber holds an idea or concept:
This Usenet posting focuses on the role and activity of a single
concept fiber for several reasons:
1. So as to state clear, unambiguous ideas.
2. So as to describe something BUILDABLE in hard-/software.
3. So as to respond to Seth Russell's posts on representation.
4. So as to state the Mentifex mind-model at its simplest.
Imagine that you are a long neuronal fiber stretching across the
great neuronal sheet of the human cortex, and that you are the
brain-mind embodiment of a concept (but only PART of an idea).
As a nerve fiber you can be either on or off, energized or not
energized, and at states in between, but you do not HOLD your
concept in the sense of CONTAINING it. Just as no "homunculus"
sits in your head, likewise no "conceptunculum" lies in a fiber.
Let us say that you are the long neuronal fiber of the concept
"(to) eat." The word "eat" is NOT inside your fiber-body, but
rather you CONTROL the word "eat" at various temporal points in
your life-long auditory memory channel. If you as the "eat" fiber
become fully energized, or "on," you will fire signal-spikes
across associative tags stretching from your own synapses over
to the recall-synapses of forms of the word "eat" in the auditory
memory. Then your internal ear will hear, that is, THINK, the
word "eat." You as a concept-fiber will have caused part of a
THOUGHT -- an expressiomn of an IDEA.
Let us back up to WHY you become active in co-creating a thought.
Both BLANKET inputs and SINGLE inputs may partially or fully
energize you -- turn you "on."
BLANKET (semi-activating) signals come from other neuronal fibers
that are part of the SYNTAX control architecture. In your case,
when the Chomskyan syntactic mind is trying to generate a thought
or sentence to the effect that "X eats Y," a node on the neuronal
syntactic tree sends out a BLANKET signal which partially activates
many -- perhaps ALL -- verbs in the vocabulary of your host mind.
The host mind is grasping for (French:) "le mot juste" -- the best
word to express the idea of consuming something with the mouth.
[You do not think about this search; you are only a cog in a Cog.]
SINGLE inputs come to you from SINGLE sources, such as from what-
ever NOUN your host mind is thinking about. Let us say that you
as the nerve-fiber for "eat" have been active in the past with
hundreds of different subject nouns such as "lions" and "tigers"
and "bears." If you have already been semi-energized by a BLANKET
signal from a syntax node trying to FLUSH out an appropriate verb,
and if a SINGLE spike comes to you from a particular subject such
as "bears," then you will go into full activation and you will
send out your own "SEMI-ACTIVATING" signals to other concept fibers.
You will semi-activate ALL the other (object) concept fibers ("Y")
with which you have ever been involved on the basis of "X eats Y."
If "bear(s)" is fully active, and if "eat" is fully active, then
many concept fibers of things that bears typically eat will be
SEMI-ACTIVATED. What pushes a particular "object" concept fiber
"over the top" into the FULL ACTIVATION that rouses a WORD-string
within the auditory memory channel? The TIME and CIRCUMSTANCE of
SPREADING ACTIVATION cause a particular OBJECT concept to turn on.
Although you as the concept fiber "eat" have been active with many
subjects and many objects, it was always at a particular time in
the life-history of your host mind, and so the JOINT influence of
the BLANKET syntax signal and the single ONE-TIME subject signal
from the "bears" concept will SELECT only that particular "object"
fiber (for associative activation) which has SIMULTANEITY tags
stretching from "X" to "Y" in the "X eats Y" nexus of association.
This revolting, shocking proposition says that our minds store
ideas and knowledge as a temporal, that is, TIME-BOUND nexus of
associative tags, typically centered around a linguistic verb
that links to subject-concepts and to object-concepts. Knowledge
is represented within a brain as SIMULTANEOUS links among the
constituent concept-fibers of an idea expressible as a sentence.
The Mentifex mind diagram below shows only one fiber per concept,
but similar concept-fibers holding the same concept are REDUNDANT
in MASSIVE PARALLELISM lest perish the thought if its underlying
concept fiber should die -- as brain cells are wont to do. GANGS
of concept fibers holding a single concept act logically as ONE.
Hearing Vision Concepts Volition Emotion Motor Output
/iiiiiii\ /!i!i!i!\ /YYYYYYYYYYYY\
| ||||||| || ||||||| | B H E | |||||||||||| |
| ||||||| || | ___ | | + + + | |||||||||||| |
| ||||||| || / \ | +----/ \ | |S|||||||||| |
| ||||||| || (bears)-|--+ + (eat) | |H|||||||||| |
| ||||||| || \___/ | + + \_/ | |A|||||||||| |
| ||||||| || | + +---+ __ | |K|||||||||| |
| || |||| || | +------------------/ \ | |E|||R|||||| |
| ||e-----||---------|--------+ ____ (fear)-|--*|||U|||K|| |
| |a||||| || ___ | + + + / \---\__/ | |||||N|||I|| |
| |||t||| || / \ | + +---+ / de- \--------|------*|||L|| |
| ||| ||| || (honey)-|----+ + ( ci- ) | |||||||||L|| |
| ||||||| || \___/ | + +---+ \ sion /--------|----------*|| |
| ||||||| || | + + + \____/ | |||||||||||| |
--
http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/ AI Minds for Uncontrollable Robots.